As negotiators head to Durban, South Africa for the next round of the UNFCCC climate negotiations, China can point to significant progress in domestic climate policy since the Cancun negotiations a year ago. March, 2011 saw the adoption of China’s 12th Five-Year Plan, binding domestically China’s first phase of its Copenhagen and Cancun commitments to reduce its carbon intensity 40 to 45 percent by 2020. In this first year of the new Five Year Plan, China also adopted a number of specific climate-related implementation measures (For a more exhaustive list, see China’s just published White Paper on its climate change activities).

Over the past several months, we (self-described Team Latvia) have been working hard to decipher Latvian climate policy and to determine Latvia’s stake in the upcoming COP negotiations. Latvia is a Baltic state, which gained its independence in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union. The official Latvian Tourism Portal states that “the best thing about Latvia is that it is so compact.” We believe Latvia’s small size is only one of its many assets. We are also proud to note that all three of us could locate Latvia on a map before this project began. Grant even has some family connections (Hawaii-Latvia, who knew?)

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But, to us, Latvia is now no longer just a location far, far away on a map. Having worked closely with members